Over the years, the gardens have become less and less free with the pay gates getting nearer and nearer the car park. So we were not best pleased to find that garden season tickets - around £30 for two seniors for a year - were being withdrawn, the formal gardens were being integrated into the palace from a paying point of view and that the next best thing was an Royal Palaces season ticket for around £60 for two seniors for a year. The garden season tickets had been good value, in that we like the gardens and go quite often, probably half a dozen or more times a year. But doubling the fare seemed a bit thick.
But then we thought about it and calmed down a bit. If we had such a season ticket we would get quite a lot more out of the palace and we might even try the Tower of London, although a down side would be loss of leverage from all the bogoff offers from Southwest Trains.
They had also upgraded the car park, with a machine taking a picture of your car and its number plate on entry and exit - but with the net result being, so long as it all worked, a much slicker & quicker system.
Through all this to the rose garden, which was looking very well in early season bloom. A bonus as we had not thought of it beforehand.
Through the wilderness, awaiting its summer cut after the spring bulbs, but with a good sprinkling of rhododendrons in full flower. Laburnum arch in good form.
Onto the big herbaceous border along the east front, also looking very well with lots of plants in flower and lots to come. I was pleased to come across some fine foxgloves. Also the striking lily illustrated, this one more or less lying down which meant that it was out of the wind - the point here being that these big and floppy flowers are rather fragile.
Quick tour of the privy garden and the sunken gardens, all well. Koy carp all present and correct and the expensive wooden steps on the way to reconstruction.
Back to the Tiltyard Café, to find that the Maids of Honour (see reference 1) had gone missing. Very disappointed. But, as luck would have it, BH found a small supply lurking behind some cup cakes and all was well after all.
Out to inspect the vegetable garden, something which we are coming across from time to time. I suppose for the modern family, not brought up with vegetables out the back (covered in livestock), a vegetable garden is just as exciting as a flower garden. At the margins we came across various middle sized pudding trees in nursery bags and were not impressed that HCP was buying such things in, having thought that they took pride in doing everything themselves. Signs explained that it was all to do with the construction of a magic garden for children, part of the current drive for all these places to make themselves more child friendly. A drive which I think has gone too far; heritage is for older people who probably don't want their heritage to become a cross with Chessington World of Adventures. Which, to give another example, Polesden Lacey is in danger of becoming.
PS: pudding trees being family slang for topiary. Small trees carved into interesting shapes. The name taken from the shape of the yew trees out on the east front of this very palace.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/folding-2.html.
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